Homeless vets: a hidden crisis

August 6, 2007|By Darryl E. Owens, Sentinel Staff Writer

Often, when Ryan Svolto manages to sleep, he finds himself back in Iraq preparing for triage, awash in blood and bodies. But he can't find his medical kit, and, helpless, he thrashes awake, damp with sweat.

As an infantry medic, he patched up soldiers wounded in combat in Iraq. Now, Svolto, 24, is trying to fix his own wounded life after a recent stint at a Daytona Beach homeless shelter.

Svolto is one of a growing number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who joined the ranks of Florida's homeless after returning home. Experts say a system already buckling under one of the nation's largest homeless populations might collapse under the weight of a new wave of veterans, many saddled with mental-health issues and crippling brain injuries.

"If I could identify and convince every homeless vet in the area to come to a shelter or a transitional-housing program," said Cathy Jackson, executive director of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, "we wouldn't have enough beds for them."

For Svolto, it's yet another battle, one he believes he won't be fighting alone.

"That's the scary part: when they get out of the Army and realize they're not who they used to be," he said. "It seems easier to disappear in the woods and live that way. A lot of these kids aren't going to be prepared. I wasn't prepared."

Nearly half of all homeless veterans served in Vietnam. Hamstrung by a lack of job skills, by drug addictions and psychological issues, they became homeless 12 to 15 years after discharge.

But veterans of the latest war are hitting the streets much sooner.

Problems emerge quickly

A recent report by the Swords to Plowshares' Iraq Veteran Project, a San Francisco advocacy group for veterans, says new vets "are already seeking housing services, some just months after returning from Iraq."

But few of them are asking for help so far in Central Florida. New veterans -- including those who served in Kuwait and now Afghanistan and Iraq -- account for just 1 percent of clients in the region using Veterans Affairs' Health Care for Homeless Veterans program, said Dan Robbin, homeless-network coordinator for the region that includes most of Florida.

But during the next decade, the VA is "ramping up" with new clinics and medical centers across the state to help new vets, he said.

What the VA doesn't provide is transitional housing, which grants vets safe harbor to kick drugs, build job skills and return to self-sufficiency.

"There is no 28-day treatment program that's going to wave the magic wand and throw a little bit of pixie dust out there and make it all right," said Thomas Griffin, CEO of The Transition House, a veterans-recovery program in Kissimmee.

It's a long, tough slog that largely falls to community-based programs. The VA paid $2.8 million in 2006 to partially defray 20 Florida programs, accounting for 450 transitional-housing beds. Another 50 beds are in the planning stages, Robbin said.

But that puts barely a dent in the problem, advocates say. The Department of Children and Families recently estimated that veterans comprise about 18 percent of Florida's homeless, with best estimates at about 18,000.

And women now count toward the tally: Though only a fraction of homeless vets (less than 5 percent in this region), new female vets are more vulnerable to homelessness than nonveteran women, a recent VA study found.

Stress tests relationships

Experts think thousands of new vets burdened with war-related psychological problems will make a bad problem even worse. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that nearly 20 percent of Iraq vets show clinical signs of major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Similarly, about a fifth of them have traumatic brain injuries, often the result of being wounded by roadside bombs. Such injuries can produce personality changes, mood swings and impaired memory.

Undiagnosed veterans become vulnerable to homelessness as relationships wither because they "may be blamed for their behaviors and struggles," said Dr. Shari Balter, a psychologist with Stand Down House, a Lake Worth drug program for homeless male veterans.

Svolto, who missed his daughter's birth while in Iraq, left the military last year. But he and his wife soon separated. Post-traumatic stress gripped Svolto, and he turned to alcohol to dull memories of the war.

"We were newlyweds when I left, but once you get back from combat, you're nothing like you used to be," he said.

War memories slow to fade

Svolto says he couldn't hold a job because of his condition. He maxed out his credit cards trying to stay afloat and lost his home in October.

He turned to Serenity House of Volusia Inc., a homeless shelter and substance-abuse-treatment program that provides transitional housing for veterans. He graduated from the program about three months ago and is receiving VA help with his post-traumatic stress.

Now, he's living with his parents in Deltona and working to win back his family.

Svolto says Serenity "kind of helped me to learn to cope with things and live life sober, but nothing [the memories] really went away. It's just a matter of accepting it more and more."

Shelters are decent, if also limited, stopgaps, but experts agree community programs geared to homeless veterans achieve the best results. The best offer transitional housing, sobriety programs and job training.

"When we start to look at the size of the facilities that we have and the number of homeless vets in the area, we don't have enough," Transition House's Griffin said.